Alternate Side(30)

“No, I just recognized you from pictures. Can I talk to you for a minute? I’m doing a story on the golf club assault and I understand you were there.”

“And you seemed so nice,” Nora said sadly, and she turned and took Homer back inside. Naturally, when she looked out the window fifteen minutes later, the reporter was talking to George.

“You are hateful,” Nora said aloud.

Charlie and Nora had agreed not to tell the twins what had happened, which Nora realized indicated how na?ve they could be. When her phone showed Rachel calling at 8 A.M., Nora snatched it up so quickly that it slipped from her hand and into Homer’s water bowl. “No!” Nora shrieked, fishing it out, shaking it off. Incredibly it still worked, although by day’s end it started to sputter and crackle like experimental music, and by the next morning died, despite an overnight in a bag of rice.

“I can’t believe Mr. Fisk tried to kill Ricky!” Rachel screamed.

Both New York tabloids had featured the story prominently, and both sounded remarkably the same. Jack Fisk (whose real name apparently was Joshua—who knew?) was a wealthy partner in a white-shoe law firm. Ricky was a struggling neighborhood handyman who lived with his wife and two young sons in the Bronx. The assault took place on a dead-end block on the Upper West Side. Several years before, one of the tabloids had done a story on dead-end blocks, and had described theirs as so neighborly that on Halloween, candy was placed outside on the stoops for trick-or-treaters. Now neighborly had become isolated, insular, circling the wagons, which was reporter-speak for “residents who won’t talk to us.” Jack was wealthy; Ricky was from one of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. Neither characterization, Nora was certain, was exactly accurate, but it made just the right kind of story that way. Ricky’s leg had been “shattered” by Jack’s golf club, both papers using the same verb. Ricky’s wife, Nita, was at his bedside and said he couldn’t talk because he was in too much pain, although the more florid of the papers said he was in agony. Jack’s attorney, Marcus King, said, “When all the facts are known, my client will be cleared of all charges.” Nita said, “Somebody has to pay for this.”

“Your father was there. He says it was an accident,” Nora said to Rachel.

“Mom, please. How do you accidentally break someone’s leg with a golf club? This is all because of that stupid parking lot, isn’t it? Have you gone to see Ricky? Is he going to be okay?”

Nora had asked Charity the same question. She had refused to answer directly.

“Faucet dripping in Rachel’s bathroom,” Charity said darkly.

“Dryer vent not working so good.”

“Drain slow in back.”

Charity had a marked tendency to be aphoristic—Charlie had once asked if they could buy her some verbs for Christmas—and when she returned to work Monday it had deepened noticeably. She made it sound as though all the things they would have called Ricky to fix over the course of six months had now happened at once, now that Ricky was gone, his men with him. Charity said that he was still in the hospital.

“Which one?” Nora asked.

“Big one,” she said. “Uptown.” Charity seemed to hold Nora at least partially responsible for Ricky’s injury.

“Charity will be so upset,” Nora told Rachel.

“She should be upset. Mr. Fisk is a scumbag. We used to pretend he wasn’t, when all he was doing was screaming at Mrs. Fisk, but come on. He put Ricky in the hospital. And Dad is standing up for him? Um, excuse me, but if Dad had been blocking the entrance to the lot Mr. Fisk would have come over and discussed it with him. He wouldn’t have beaten him with a golf club. And Charity won’t quit because, duh, me and Ollie. But she should quit. This is all because Ricky is brown and poor.”

Nora did not speak. She and Charlie had made a pact long ago that they would maintain a united front with the children no matter what. She had never been so tempted to throw the agreement aside, to say to Rachel, your father is wrong, Jack Fisk is a terrible person who did a terrible thing, I can barely stand to look at your father when he defends him.

“Mom?” said Rachel.

“I keep wondering how Ricky is feeling,” Nora said.

“So go see him and find out. Tell him Ollie and I are worried about him. Tell him none of us believe this ridiculous accident story. I’m going.”

An hour later it was Christine on the phone. “Have you seen the papers?” she said.

“Of course I’ve seen the papers. I’m beside myself. I’m exhausted by the papers.”

“Exhausted? I’m excited. We’re going to have people working double shifts to meet the demand.”

“What are you talking about?” Nora said.

“The First Lady. You didn’t see the First Lady? She led an exercise class wearing the Candide pants and top. We’re going to be swamped.”

Nora owned both. The pants said “The best of all possible worlds” in the waistband. The shirt said “Cultivate your garden.” Nora sometimes wondered what Voltaire, resurrected, would think of all this, but the shirt was a slim cut with raglan sleeves and the pants had a good rise and laundered well, so she’d decided not to fret about dead French philosophers.

“What did you think I was talking about?” Christine said.